Before getting stuck into the main point let me say that what's happening to the people of Venezuela is nothing short of a tragedy. If you, like me, live in a stable and affluent society then I doubt we can really imagine what Venezuelans feel as their society descends into …

Uncertainty can be confounding when thinking rationally. After many reasoned steps forward you may arrive at a fork in the road where your imperfect knowledge of the facts prevents you from knowing the correct direction of your next step. And if it's wrong, all subsequent steps will be wrong too …

These are the words I spoke at my father's funeral. I've altered them very slightly, mainly to remove names of family members. My father was a kind and gentle man. He was a man of few words but words that mattered. If you stand in the sitting room of his …

Note: The main point of this post is on sketching a simple and plausible reason why growth held up in 2016 despite uncertainty from the result of the June 2016 Brexit vote together with the ensuing speculation on when (or if) Article 50 would be triggered. This is quite distinct …

The pollsters were wrong about Trump. This should not have come as too much of as a surprise. I hoped the predictions showing he would lose were correct, but following the 2015 UK General Election and the Brexit vote I was wary of slim margins in times of unusual political …

I was prompted to write this after happening across this fascinating article in the Financial Times. Unhappily it's behind a paywall so I'll recount the gist of it here. Imagine you had a coin that had a 60% or 0.6 chance of tossing to give heads and a 40 …

It's my birthday today and as a treat, I've turned off my phone and am ignoring emails and social media for a short time so I can write up some stuff on macroeconomic identities. Yes, I know it sounds a bit sad, but it's what makes me happy. In this …

I get my heart pumping at 150+ beats per minute three or four times a week in 45 minute sessions. An obvious benefit is that I generally feel fit and healthy, but that's not my main motivation: regular exercise helps keep my mental state in balance. Immediately after exercising my …

I shared some thoughts on why I voted remain, then mused on the result and the possibility that brexit might not happen, but now I'd like to try and understand why people in the UK voted to leave in such large numbers. There are a variety of simple stories: In …

photo credit: Start button via photopin (license) It's midnight on one of the shortest nights of the year and I'm ambling down a leafy road. There's some light summer rain and I'm pleasantly inebriated after a few pints at Glasgow's real ale festival. When I arrive home I check my …